Cleveland Marathon Weekend: 5K Recap

May 23, 2017

As you know, this past weekend was the Cleveland Marathon race weekend. It was a super big deal this year — the 40th running of the Cleveland Marathon. As an ambassador, I felt pretty special to be a part of such an amazing weekend.

What a whirlwind! I have so much to tell you. I was trying so hard to keep this to one post, but honestly, since this weekend was jam-packed with activity, I’m splitting my recap into two. Today is all about Friday and Saturday’s events. Tomorrow will be the big review about Sunday. Onward!

The 40th Running of the Cleveland Marathon — 5K Recap!

Expo and VIP Dinner

On Friday, my husband and I went to the expo. We saw my friends Melissa, Stephani, and Jill. I’m super excited that I finally got a signed copy of Jill’s new book, Running With a Police Escort (I’ve already started it and I can’t put it down!), and then Melissa, Stephani, and I had our picture taken at the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon booth. Such fun! I love these ladies!

After the expo, we headed over to the VIP dinner to enjoy the evening with fellow ambassadors, media personalities, elite runners, and most importantly, the Cleveland Marathon staff.

Dinner was delicious as usual, but the most fun was hanging out with friends new and old. We had our traditional photo taken on the steps of the Arcade. After the photo, we were all hanging around talking and then all of a sudden someone says, “oh my god, is he proposing?!” We whip around to find Melissa’s new fiance down on one knee! It was legit the sweetest thing EVER. We were all almost in tears. Stephanie especially — but more on her tomorrow. 🙂

The evening quickly ended and my husband and I headed home to get to bed. I had an early wake-up call on Saturday morning to get my 5K runners down to their race!

5K Recap (and 8K)

My Saturday morning started off terribly. I woke up at 4:30 am (a full hour before I set my alarm) in tears! I had a nightmare that I got trapped in a fancy hotel and I couldn’t get my girls to their race on time! It was awful. Needless to say, the next hour of sleep wasn’t very restful at all.

Thankfully I picked up my runners (ON TIME!) and we made it to the race with plenty of time to spare. Parking was a cinch, we used flushing toilets at the Arcade (where I had just been the night before), and we were at the starting line with enough time to do some dynamic warm-ups and some light jogging.

I lined up with my runners to hang out with them before the race started. Unfortunately when I decided I should get out of the starting zone, I realized I was trapped inside the fence. Luckily I was an ambassador and knew people (and was also sporting my ambassador shirt), otherwise I might have felt extremely awkward. I ended up standing right next to the guy doing the manual timing, wedged next to the elite tent with the elite coaches. Talk about being starstruck.

Wedged by the timer guy. But saw fellow ambassador, Andrew!

As soon as the runners started, I moved out of the fenced in area. Before I knew it I saw my first runner coming in! She looked like she had it too easy so I had to do some gentle nudging (by way of yelling). She picked it up and went on to cross with a nice, new PR. My second runner came in looking strong, too. She also snagged a PR but didn’t need any yelling. 🙂 My third runner came in and she, too, looked amazing! I’m fairly certain she had a personal best, too. They all did such an incredible job. All smiles across the finish line! I was a proud coach on Saturday.

Congrats to all of your runners! I love the “proud coach” role. How fun to witness a proposal. Doing it at a marathon sounds pretty perfect to me. Can’t wait to hear about the rest of the weekend. I’ve done too many race series to count. My first was the Flying Pig 3-way in 2013. It was fun!

hate that you had that nightmare but how great was it to see your runners take up the challenge!!

I have done one back to back event – here in Arnhem we have the Bridge to Bridge run, which is 3 miles, 6 miles or 10 miles. I was signed up for the 10 and my daughter the 3 and she didn’t want to run it (she hadn’t been training, to be fair and I signed her up hoping she’d do it). I had about 1 hour in between events but I ran her 3 in addition to my 10 🙂 I was training at the time for Cologne Marathon so it wasn’t a completely crazy idea.

Also I love the remix challenges with Rock’n’Roll marathons – I do those every time!